Necropolis Now

Thursday, August 2, 2018

This is my new book, The
Cultic Life of Trees in the Prehistoric Aegean, Levant, Egypt and Cyprus.
Published by Peeters: Leuven.It is 314
pages, and its dimensions are 30 cm x 21 cm.

Summary:

This research examines 44
images of Minoan tree cult as depicted in sphragistic jewellery, portable
objects and wall paintings from Late Bronze Age Crete, mainland Greece and the
Cyclades. The study also compares the Aegean images with evidence for sacred
trees in the Middle and Late Bronze Age Levant, Egypt and Cyprus. The purpose
of this investigation is the production of new interpretations of Minoan images
of tree cult. Each of the chapters of the book looks at both archaeological and
iconographic evidence for tree cult. The Aegean material is, in addition,
examined more deeply through the lenses of modified Lacanian psychoanalytic
modelling, “new” animism, ethnographic analogy, and a Neo-Marxist hermeneutics
of suspicion. It is determined that Minoan images of tree cult depict elite
figures performing their intimate association with the numinous landscape
through the communicative method of envisioned and enacted epiphanic ritual.
The tree in such images is a physiomorphic representation of a goddess type
known in the wider eastern Mediterranean associated with effective rulership
and with the additional qualities of fertility, nurturance, protection,
regeneration, order and stability. The representation of this deity by elite
human females in ritual performance functioned to enhance their self
representation as divinities and thus legitimise and concretise the position of
elites within the hegemonic structure of Neopalatial Crete. These ideological
visual messages were circulated to a wider audience through the reproduction
and dispersal characteristic of the sphragistic process, resulting in Minoan
elites literally stamping their authority on to the Cretan landscape and hence
society.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

A beautiful young woman
drapes her long auburn hair over a human skull, pressing it close to her face
like a lover. Another, clad in black and holding a wooden staff, poses like a
model in a photo shoot on location in an incongruous forest. Long, elaborately
decorated fake fingernails like talons grasp shiny crystals, evoking the “just
so” beauty of a staged magazine spread. In the world of the Witches of
Instagram, the art of photography meets business witchery and feminist
activism.

Is it (still) the season of
the witch? Luxury fashion house, Dior, has a tarot-themed collection;
witchcraft featured in recent issues of Vogue
magazine; young witch-identifying women perform “fashion magic”; and an
alchemist-fashion designer has invented colour-changing hair dye, inspired by a
scene in the 1996 movie, The Craft.
An angry yet luxurious sex-positive feminism is in the air; goddesses, witches
and sluts are rising up again, a decade and a half after Rockbitch stopped
touring and almost thirty years after Annie Sprinkle’s first workshops
celebrating the sacred whore.

Exhibitions showcasing the
work of living and dead occult artists have been on the increase for several
years now, most recently Black Light:
Secret Traditions in Art Since the 1950s at the Centre de Cultura
Contemporània de Barcelona, and Barry William Hale + NOKO’s Enochian
performance at Dark Mofo in Tasmania. Multidisciplinary artist Bill Crisafi and
dancer Alkistis Dimech exemplify the Sabbatic witchcraft aesthetic; Russ
Marshalek and Vanessa Irena mix fitness and music with witchcraft in the age of
the apocalypse; DJ Juliana Huxtable and queer arts collective House of Ladosha
are a coven; rappers Azealia Banks and Princess Nokia are out and proud brujas;
and singer Lana del Rey admits hexing Donald Trump.

The
Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies invites
submissions of articles (5000–8000 words) for a special issue on Pagan Art and
Fashion, edited by Caroline Tully (caroline.tully@unimelb.edu.au). How are
Paganism, modern Goddess worship, witchcraft and magick utilised in the service
of creative self-expression today? Potential topics might fall under the
general headings of, but are not limited to, Aesthetics, Dance, Fashion, Film
and Television, Internet Culture, Literature, Music, and Visual Art.

Friday, September 29, 2017

I've got a new article coming out in the next issue of Witches & Pagans Magazine #35 called "Trees as
Otherkin: Minoan Crete, Biblical Religion and Paganism Today." This article derives from my PhD research on Tree Cult in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean from the Bronze to Iron Ages.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

As of the week starting 2 October, we'll be screening a montage of
three black and white Roman-themed films in the Decadence and Domesticity exhibition: The Last Days of Pompeii (1913); Caius Julius Caesar (1914); and Messalina (1924). They are all FAB!

The antiquities
exhibition, Decadence and Domesticity,
is part of The Arts of Engagement
exhibition and is located on the ground floor of the Arts West Building at the
University of Melbourne. It runs until 23 October 2017.